Which fictional character in On the Road is based on Neal Cassady?

Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is based on Neal Cassady.

Dean Moriarty is the charismatic, impulsive traveler whose energy drives much of the novel’s movement. Kerouac modeled the character on Neal Cassady, a Denver-born figure who became an important presence in the social world surrounding Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs.

The novel changes real names and reshapes events, so Dean Moriarty is not a documentary portrait of Cassady. Sal Paradise, the narrator, represents a fictionalized Kerouac, while Carlo Marx is associated with a fictionalized Allen Ginsberg.

Cassady’s influence extended beyond On the Road. He later became strongly associated with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and with the countercultural bus journey described in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The character’s speed, talk, and appetite for experience helped define the novel’s enduring image of Beat travel.